Recording with Ronnie
Written on:Thursday, November 05, 2009
I played on a recording by pianist/composer Ronnie Smith recently. It was a terrific and a somewhat novel experience. Ronnie had decided to record in his house, he has a fabulous piano and decided that he wanted to use it on his recording. Ronnie has a beautiful big house situated in Hertfordshire but to convert it into a recording studio was far from easy, in fact for recording engineer/expert Matt Howe in must have been a colossal undertaking. Starting on the Friday, with numerous trips back and forth to Pinewood studios, his house and various other exotic places it was finally completed and ready to go by the Monday, there were mics everywhere.
So after a drive down on the Saturday and a rehearsal all day Sunday by Monday morning we were keen and eager to go. Ronnie in his room with his beloved Steinway grand and a Fender Rhodes, I was in a narrow corridor with my guitar, my amp was in the utility room next to the washing machine, Neil and his drums in the dinning room along with percussionist Bosco and bass player Patrick. Matt's control room was in the hall way as you come in through the front door. Although we couldn't see each other we could communicate as we each had a microphone and a set of headphones. What was terrific about the experience was, with the exception of Patrick we all lived there too. Our days followed a fairly predicable routine, we aim to start recording around 10.30am, this often involved rehearsing and talking our way through a piece before going for a recording, we'd keep recording till we had one which although might not be note perfect was close and had the "right feel". This would continue till about nine in the evening when we'd stop for tea before patching the tracks we'd done till about midnight. It was then time for a little nightcap before bed and the whole thing starting again.
Musicians are quite a bizarre bunch, because (and I probably would have to include myself in this statement) they spend so much time and effort developing certain skills are often lacking in others and usually need to be looked after. Five musicians living under one roof is probably not the best thing. We lived mostly off frozen pizza and pre prepared salad. Ronnie on his turn to cook managed to cook not only pizzas but also the plastic trays that the pizzas were sat on which of course fused to the base. It was impossible to cut; we managed to snap it into servings and made I think quite an impressive attempt at devouring it.
So what do you do after recording and playing for 15 hours, well in Neil and my case we watched music videos, a harmless activity although after watching Tony Williams Neil decided to practice his drums at two o'clock in the morning, just as I had gone to bed. It was like in Tom and Jerry when Tom was playing the double bass and singing "Is you is' while Jerry was lying in bed with it bouncing up and down. Ronnie and Matt like a little drink to help unwind. Ronnie liked a little drink to help him unwind at about two in the afternoon and proceeded to unwind for the rest of the day. We hid his brandy on the second day and eventually persuaded him that he'd drunk it all, he just shrugged and produced another bottle. He and Matt, who liked a little tipple of Rum, would be often up till four or five and there were some very bleary eyes at the start of some of the sessions.
At the end of four days recording we had an albums worth of material ready for Matt to work his magic. Essentially an instrumental album of Ronnie Smith compositions the sound was augmented by flute and vocal gymnastics on a most unusual version of Bye Bye Blackbird' and a couple of songs sung by the wonderful singer Tina May.
So what was the highlight for me, well other than working with some amazing musicians I got to us the same mic that was used on the original James Bond theme, dum da da da daa, dum dum dum, dum di di di dee, dum dum dum.
